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Loving Community Theater
Written By: Adair Simon - Highlands Cashiers Players | Issue: 2017/01 - Winter
I first got involved with community theater when I was 13.
As a 13-year-old working with adults, having the responsibility of learning all those lines (which at that age was easy), and showing up on time and interacting with everyone on a suitably mature level was a great learning experience, not to mention fun.
I didn’t even think about all the people, other than actors, who made that show happen. I understood about the director, she told me where to go and what to do. But I never even thought about the people who built the sets, wrote the newspaper articles, took the tickets, etc.
Now that I’m acting and directing for Highlands Cashiers Players, I realize it takes a community to produce a show. We have people like long-time actress and director Virginia Talbot, newcomer Heather Lowe Prine, who spends hours finding just the right shows to produce for the community. Ken Knight, a retired Navy guy, has been supervising and building sets for HCP for years while simultaneously selling ads for the playbills. President of the Board Michael Lanzilotta works with 12 volunteers on the board to make sure all the tasks of providing the community with four shows a year are taken care of. There’s Craig Eister, who manages HCP’s new website, and fundraising director Faye Siegel. Then, of course, come the actors who audition for the shows and Marty Boone, who takes hundreds of headshots and action pictures of the shows for publicity purposes.
All these people are essential to making the shows happen, and we want more hands on deck. On March 2-4 and 9-11, HCP puts on the dinner theater show “Middletown.” We will need waiters, ticketing folks, publicity helpers, and all sorts of others to volunteer. In May, Highlands Cashiers Players will present the comedy “Don’t Cry for Me, Margaret Mitchell.” The auditions will be held March 19 at 3:00 P.M. at PAC. New actors are needed to audition, set builders are needed, and on and on. 2017 is HCP’s year to widen our group of people involved. Please email Board President Michael Lanzilotta at [email protected] or Adair Simon at [email protected] to learn how you can become part of Highlands Cashiers Players.
